Hollyhock House

Excerpt: 'Mary, Jane, and Florimel—these were the three Garden girls. Mary, Jane said, “looked it.” She was seventeen, broad and low of brow, with brown hair softly shading it, brown eyes, as warm and trusty as a dog’s, looking straight out upon a friendly world from under straight brows and long brown lashes; a mouth that might have been too large if it had not been so sweet that there could not be too much of its full rosy flexibility. She had white, strong teeth and a clean-cut, reliable sort of nose, a boyish squareness of chin, and clear wholesome tints of white, underlaid with red, in her skin. She was somewhat above medium height and moved with a fine healthy rhythm, like one thinking of her destination and not of how she looked getting to it. Last of all, she had wonderfully beautiful hands, not small, but perfectly modelled, capable, kind, healing hands which, young as they were, had the motherly look that cannot be described,4 yet is easily recognizable, the kind of hand that looks as if it were made expressly to support and pat baby shoulders.'